


The Haunting of Mister and Misses Wayne

by Ischa



Series: Halloween 2014 [4]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 08:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ischa/pseuds/Ischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a ghost story from a ghost pov. </p>
<p>
  <i> She was terrified that she had to look over her son for another forty or fifty years that way. Always trapped, always out of reach and with no way of making him listen. <br/>All she wanted was for Bruce to let them go.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunting of Mister and Misses Wayne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [denelian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/denelian/gifts).



> Beta Icalynn. <3
> 
> Prompt was: i'd rather like to see the Waynes trying so *hard* to get through to their son, to let him know he doesn't need to put himself *through* all that...  
> almost like a haunting in reverse? like, THEY can't move on because BRUCE won't let go, and does everything he does in their name?  
> [not a fan of horror, generally. unless it's *really* sci-fi or urban fantasy?]  
> For denelian

Sometime she was sure he could hear them. He had just chosen not to hear them. 

It made her ache and it made her husband desperate. 

To be honest, Martha was desperate too, because they were trapped here as long as Bruce didn’t let them go. 

She hadn’t wanted to go – not at first. He had been so small and scrawny. Hurt beyond anything he had ever experienced and if it was a comfort for her son to feel them sometimes. To hear them whisper bedtime stories when he was just at the edge of falling asleep, who was she to deny that comfort? No mother could. 

But then he went away and they couldn’t follow. But they couldn’t move on either. 

They were trapped here in this old mansion, year after year, after year. No one could see them, no one could hear them. 

The house grew dark and died slowly. It became a tomb with Alfred as its caretaker. 

It was their grave, away from their grave. 

And then he came back, different, stronger, driven and Martha had thought her boy had finally found a purpose, finally could let go, but she had been so wrong. 

She was still here, she and her husband were still here and couldn’t move forward. 

“He doesn’t hear us anymore,” Martha said. 

“He doesn’t.” 

It seemed to her that her husband was growing resigned. 

She wasn’t ready to give up yet. 

Bruce had heard them before. 

“When he was a kid,” Thomas, said. “Kids hear all kinds of things and he had been grieving, out of his mind.”

“And now you think he’s in the right state of mind? Look at him,” she replied a bit too sharply, maybe.

Bruce was poring over files again, the cowl showed aside, but the suite still on. Clothed in darkness and Kevlar. Spending time with the bats. 

“This wasn’t what I wanted for him.” 

“We can’t do anything about it anymore, Martha, because we’re dead,” Thomas said. He said ‘dead’ like it meant something. It didn’t. She was still here, he was still here, thinking and feeling and arguing about their son. 

Something could still be done. 

~+~ 

Martha tried in the mornings when Bruce was slowly waking up on good days. The barrier was less somehow on the verge of wakefulness. Sometimes she thought he heard her. It was in the way he smiled gently, just the curve of his lips, because he had nearly forgotten how it was to smile for real. All his smiles lately, his laughs, were fake. He was pretending all the time to be normal, and less than he really was. She understood it. Bruce needed to keep up appearances if he wanted to keep the other, The Batman, hidden from view.

It gave her hope when she saw him smile like that. Real. 

He shook it off too fast, was wide awake a moment later and then he got up and showered, ate breakfast and was unreachable for her. Didn’t hear her whispers anymore. Quite and increasing in desperation. 

~+~ 

“Why does he put himself through all of this?” Thomas asked watching Alfred stitch up their son’s wounds. He came back bloody and bruised more often than not. 

“For us,” she answered. 

“We don’t want this. He has to know that we would never have wanted this for him. No parent would.” He tried to clap Bruce on the shoulder, but his hand went right through Bruce’s body and Bruce shivered. 

“Are you alright Sir?” Alfred asked. 

“Yes,” Bruce bit out. 

Alfred went back to stitching up his wounds. He knew of course that Bruce was not alright. 

“When I made that testament,” Thomas said, “I hoped he would have had more common sense. Is it my fault?” He withdrew his hand fast and saw Bruce shiver again. “I also hoped that he wouldn’t be a kid when we died.” He added gently. 

Martha took his hand in hers. “It’s not your fault. It’s not Alfred’s, it’s not Bruce’s.”

She couldn’t say whose fault it was, maybe it was the man who shot them. On the other hand, you don’t just become the darkness, it has to be there all along.

Maybe their deaths were just what sparked it into existence. 

~+~ 

Most of the time they were drifting in and out of existence, because it was too hard to stay and watch their son. 

It had been easier before, before the darkness had taken over and what came out was the Batman.   
When Bruce turned into Batman Martha hardly recognized him anymore. 

She was glad she couldn’t leave the grounds and follow him around Gotham. She didn’t want to see him like this. It was hard enough to see him come back bloody and bruised. She didn’t have to see how he looked when he took people apart and terrified criminals. 

“He does good,” Thomas said. 

“He could do good in other ways too. Like Alfred said over and over and over again. If he could just be Bruce Wayne. Not this shell, this pretender to be our son, if he could be-” she stopped, because it was sometimes too much. The despair too great and all she wished for was oblivion. 

Thomas hugged her close and she sobbed against his shoulder. 

She was terrified that she had to look over her son for another forty or fifty years that way. Always trapped, always out of reach and with no way of making him listen. 

All she wanted was for Bruce to let them go.

~+~

Sometimes she imagined him dying. It was not a good thought, but it was on bad days when it happened. 

He could die any moment and then she could take him into her arms again and be with him. Whisper all the things in his ear she wanted him to hear for years and he would look at her and see her and she would feel him against her body and she would never, ever let go of him. 

On most days she was glad when he came home alive.

Bruce was her son and he was too stubborn to let go and he was too stubborn to quit and maybe, just maybe they were clinging to him just as much. 

It was what it was. 

She would wait for him, they would wait for him.

What were another fifty years, really?


End file.
